My favorite reading at the age of eight was a wonderful edition of Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey” in a fine high-sounding metrical translation by Voss and with many beautiful illustrations by Friedrich Preller, of Weimar, at whose house my mother (Helene von Heimburg) became engaged to my father. As a result of reading these very exciting Greek chronicles I constantly enacted scenes therefrom. My mother’s clever fingers fashioned for me from silver paper and pasteboard helmet, armor, and shield; and as Achilles I would drag Hector (my little sister, Marie) on my chariot (two overturned chairs) around the walls of Troy (the dining-room table). In the winter there was always skating on the Oder, and I remember, aged seven or eight, being given money to buy a ticket of admission and to skate to my heart’s content. Part of this ticket had to be retained and given up on leaving the ice. Of course I lost this ticket and being refused egress by the uniformed attendant, I dismally skated about for hours, becoming more and more frightened as the sun went down and the river became more and more deserted. I thought I would have to remain there for the rest of my young life, and it was a very tear-stained and miserable little boy who ran toward the dear Tante Marie who, having become anxious at my absence, had come to see where I was and who released me, by payment for another ticket, from my dreadful imprisonment. Tante Marie is a younger sister of my mother’s who came to live with us at the age of sixteen and who became my mother’s closest helper during many years of storm and stress, whose gentle and patient self-sacrifice have never failed her and who, thank God, is still living and as wonderful as ever, the last link with that dim past of long ago. I think I was somewhat afraid of my father in those days. He was rather stern and taciturn. Life was hard and the struggle for existence difficult. He was somewhat severe about my studies and as those were the days when whipping children for naughtiness was considered an essential of their education, I received my share of such punishment. In fact, sometimes I was whipped in school and then had to take my school report home to my father and he would perhaps repeat the dose. But with all that I was very proud of him and used to enjoy trotting by his side along the promenade on the banks of the Oder, because so many people would take off their hats to him deferentially as he passed. He also gave us children a good deal of his time in reading to us books that would stimulate our imaginations and cultivate our instincts for the beautiful—Grimm’s and Andersen’s “Fairy Tales,” the “Arabian Nights,” and some of the parables from the New Testament.